Valorization of Esparto Grass Cellulosic Derivatives for the Development of Promising Energetic Azidodeoxy Biopolymers: Synthesis, Characterization and Isoconversional Thermal Kinetic Analysis

In the frame of developing new high‐energy materials from bioresources, emergent cellulose and microcrystalline cellulose functionalized with explosophoric azides were successfully synthesized from a prominent alternative esparto grass fibres. The designed insensitive nitrogen‐rich cellulosic biopolymers, namely, azidodeoxy esparto grass cellulose (AEGC) and azidodeoxy esparto grass microcrystalline cellulose (AEGMCC), displayed outstanding features, such as nitrogen content (w/w) of 18.24–18.68 %, the density of 1.601–1.626 g/cm3, and thermal decomposition of 203–218 °C. Their kinetic triplet was also determined under non‐isothermal DSC conditions employing isonversional integral approaches. Interestingly, the apparent activation energy and the decimal logarithm of a pre‐exponential factor of the developed AEGC and AEGMCC were found to be better than those of the common nitrocellulose. In addition, the reaction model examination based on Trache‐Abdelaziz‐Siwani (TAS) approach revealed that the produced AEGC and AEGMCC were accurately presented by an autocatalytic Avrami‐Erofeev decomposition process. These results established that esparto grass fibres could be considered as a valuable alternative feedstock for the synthesis of outstanding energetic cellulose‐rich polymers for potential applications in solid propellant formulations.